Before he left to serve in the Navy, he brought me used copies that matched the ones he owned as a kid. My son is now almost 30 years old and he still remembers these books. We talked about what made a story scary, how to tell a great ghost story and the basics of acting and public speaking. We read the stories out loud to each other, and even his friends.
The Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz was a favorite of my oldest son when he was younger. It's perfect for kids 10 - 12, teens 13 - 15, or people 16+ that scare really easily and can't handle hardcore horror. This edition has newer pictures, but the original illustrator's drawings are intensely creepy, and unmistakably recognizable. It's filled with mostly creepy short stories, with a chapter dedicated to spooky yet humorous stories to make you laugh instead. Needless to say the stories didn't scare me like they did when I was a kid, but I still found that I was a little creeped out going to the bathroom in the dark, so to me that's a win for any book or movie, because fiction doesn't scare me easily. I chose to reread these books due to the Scary Stories movie that came out recently. I'm still not entirely sure why I love something so much that gave me several serious complexes that continue into adulthood, but I guess I'm just twisted like that. This is a very beloved book from my childhood, along with it's prequel and sequel. I really only remembered a few stories from this one, so most of the stories were new to me this go around. While the first collection has some true classics, I think I prefer volume 2 because of the way it raises the scares a notch.Īnother collection of spooky tales, Scary Stories 2 is not quite as good as the original but I love it anyway. Combined, of course, with Gammell’s iconic illustrations, there’s not a finer book of campfire tales yet. The slim volumes of utmost quality serves the vision much better than a mediocre thick collection, which is unfortunately the structure of competing collections. Schwartz deserves much praise for his dedication to folklore and attention to quality. It took another 7 years before the third book was released and of course there hasn’t been any more collections since. It doesn’t surprise me at all that it took a full 3 years between volume 1 and 2 because of the massive research involved. What people don’t realize about Scary Stories is that it’s an extremely scholarly project. The list of books include many from academia. What I love most is that Schwartz takes time at the end to explain his sources for the legend and offer supplemental reading suggestions for those interested. I was going to include my list of favorites when I realized I loved every story in here except one or two which were still good. This second volume of scary stories compiled/adapted from folklore and legend is significantly scarier and more adult than the previous volume.
0 kommentar(er)
